Jerry Wood
by gloryblastit
Summary: The existential angst of Jerry Wood. Hope is restored in the form of Ponyboy, Dally, and Johnny.
1. Default Chapter

He woke up hacking up a lung just like every other morning. He groped for his cigarettes and snaked one from the pack before he even had his glasses on.

Hack hack hack. He lit a match, lit the cigarette, and sucked in a healthy lungful.

"Aw, Christ," he said, sitting up, feeling dizzy. He found his glasses and slapped them on. 50 pounds overweight, high cholesterol, smoking to beat the band, his doctor warned him his arteries wouldn't be able to take much more.

"Jerry, you've got to start exercising, quit smoking, eat right," He'd stopped going to the doctor. He just woke up so damn tired every morning, tired in every way. Tired of himself, tired of life, of his life.

He boiled water, dumped some instant coffee into a mug, some sugar, cream. Stirred.

He stared out the apartment window at the crystal clear autumn day and thought about how his life had veered so far off track. Lit another cigarette, downed the rest of the coffee, ran a hand over the sandpaper stubble on his cheek.

He was 35, unmarried, undating. He had no career to speak of. He was assistant teacher at a preschool. The apartment he lived in was little better than a tenement.

He pulled on his suit, a brown suit that was growing shiny and threadbare, he sure as hell didn't have the dough for a new one.

He lit another cigarette, stuffed himself into his little beater, paint chipping, tie rods ready to blow. Pitched the butt into the weeds.

Shiny suit, crappy apartment, crappy car, crappy job. He didn't have the energy to do any better, he didn't care.

At the little school house Miss Jean was waiting for him. The kids ran and yelled, fell and cried.

"I thought we'd go on a class picnic," she said, as kids ran past.

"Picnic?"

"Yes, up on Jay Mountain,"

"By that old church?" he said. He didn't know why but that church gave him a weird feeling. It had been built and run by a strange off shoot of the Baptists about 10 years ago then they up and moved to San Fransisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara. Somewhere hot and Spanish sounding in California. If he recalled correctly that off shoot was more of a cult than anything else.

"Sure, I guess,"

So they packed up all the kids and bundled them into their little fall jackets and he wiped noses and washed sticky little hands and wondered why. They'll just get sticky again.

The church loomed on the top of Jay Mountain as it always did, creepy and ominous. White slatted boards rotting in the warm Oklahoma sun.

"Children, stay out of the church," despite his feelings of creep out, that church was a fire hazard, a tinderbox that would go up like a Roman candle.

The kids didn't listen, just ran and yelled and hit and cried.

Miss Jean was on the other side so they could have as wide a view as possible of the kids. Surrounding the parameters.

Jerry looked at the sky, began to see swirls in the soft blue, felt himself drifting up and sinking down…and the thought that had been dogging him slipped inside the tender meat of his brain. 'End it, Jerry. Why don't you just end it? What's the point, Jerry? What's the point?'

What was the point? He'd lost any such point to his life, if he'd ever had one. Just going day to day, breath to breath. Things were devoid of mentors, role models, heroes. He had no one to look up to, he had lost himself somehow along the way.

He found himself thinking of cook outs, bon fire parties, and he looked quick at the church. Did he smell smoke?


	2. ch2

Almost as soon as he thought he smelled smoke black billows of smoke came from the church.

Kids cried and clung to each other and Miss Jean was herding a few strays closer to the front.

Did he hear a noise from in the church? Faintly he heard a noise but it wasn't, it couldn't be…

"What's going on?" A kid had tapped him, not a kid really but a teenager with bleached blond hair cut choppily, dark eyebrows. A look of deep concern on his face.

"Well, we don't know for sure," Jerry said with a lemon sucking grin on his face, "we were having a school picnic up here and the first thing we knew, the place is burning up. Thank goodness this is a wet season and the old thing is worthless anyway,"

The teenager looked unconvinced that these were things to be thankful for, and something in Jerry wavered a bit as he thought he heard, faintly, cries from inside the church. Who the hell was this kid, anyway?

"Stand back, children. The firemen will be coming soon," It didn't make him feel any better to be saying that, though he thought it would.

"I bet we started it," The blond kid said to a black haired kid who sort of materialized beside him. His hair was cut in the same choppy style, as though they'd hacked it off with a knife. Who the hell were these kids?

"We must have dropped a lighted cigarette or something," The kid with black hair stared at him with big, solemn eyes. Jerry couldn't take his eyes off of them.

"Jerry, some of the kids are missing," Miss Jean said calmly, but the calm was cracking, and her eyes were too bright, like she had a fever.

"They're probably around here somewhere. You can't tell with all this excitement where they might be,"

"No," Miss Jean shook her head, and her pupils were pinpoints of fear, and Jerry realized she wasn't calm at all, "they've been missing for at least a half an hour. I thought they were climbing the hill…"

Inside the church, clear as day now, there was screaming.

"I told them not to play in the church…I told them…" Miss Jean was cracking. Jerry shook her.

"I'll get them, don't worry!" The bleach blond kid in the cracked leather jacket took off at a dead run for the church. Almost subliminally Jerry thought "hood" when he looked at both these teenagers. They were lean and slouchy and dressed in faded jeans and tee shirts. Jerry caught the kid's arm.

"I'll get them. You kids stay out!" He jerked loose and ran. The dark haired kid squinted up at Jerry, looked at the fire, and ran after the first kid.

Jerry watched them run into the church, watched them not even hesitate. He hung his head as he realized he would not have done the same.

"They're fucking crazy," Jerry jerked his head up as another hoody looking teen stood beside him. This one was tall, and meaner looking than the other two. He had natural white blond hair and pale blue eyes.

This new kid went over to the church and yelled at the other two. But he helped set the kids down outside and dragged the first two out of the church as it collapsed. His arm was engulfed in flames, but the fire department had arrived by that time, along with ambulances.

All three were unconscious.


	3. ch3

Miss Jean looked at the children with a sharp, almost painful relief, and she looked at the three teenagers like they were saints.

Jerry couldn't help looking at them like that as well.

The firemen ran at the fire, trained their heavy hoses on it. The paramedics concerned themselves with the teens. Jerry watched as they checked vital signs , slipped the oxygen thing onto their noses, and on the kid with the black hair, who was hurt much worse than the others, he watched as they cut off his clothes, dressed the worst of the burns, and started an I.V. on him. The kid didn't stir the whole time.

The tow headed kid, the mean looking one, had come to with the oxygen they'd put on him, and he ripped it off.

"What the hell?" he said, eyes blazing. A paramedic spoke soothingly to him and while that didn't seem to calm him down, his glimpse of the kid with the black hair did.

Miss Jean had the kids well in hand, she'd soothed the ones who were crying, quieted the ones who were screaming.

Jerry approached the paramedics.

"Can I go with these boys to the hospital?"

The paramedic glanced at the kid with the black hair, checked something on the I.V. dripping into his arm, then turned to Jerry.

"Ah, sure, you can go in the ambulance with that one," he pointed to the boy with the dyed yellow hair, the boy who had first approached him and who had run first into the church.

"This kid here," the paramedic jerked a thumb at the mean looking tow head, "he wants to go with this one," and he pointed to the other kid, who looked very bad to Jerry, dying bad.

"Okay, thanks," he said, and climbed into the ambulance with the paramedic and the kid.

Night came quick as the ambulance sped into Tulsa, and it seemed to hit every pot hole. Jerry wanted a cigarette, but a square orange sign on the oxygen tank said, "No Smoking". So he watched the boy as they went along and couldn't help notice how young he looked.

"Who are you?" Jerry whispered, and his fingers itched to hold a cigarette.

The boy stirred, moaned a little.

"I think he's coming around," Jerry said to the paramedic driving.

"Where…?" The kid had opened his eyes, and his voice was hoarse.

"Take it easy, kid. You're in an ambulance," Jerry felt almost edgy, not wanting this kid to panic. He was used to four year olds, not 14 year olds. Or 13, 15. Who knew?

On the way to the hospital he fielded the kid's questions but thought his own thoughts.

He should have gone into that church. Those kids were his responsibility, he should have gone.

These kids here, what did they have to do with it? He was reminded of the shorts he used to see at the movies, the hero coming in and saving the day.

He hung his head. That's what these three did. They came in and saved the day. If they had not come those kids would have burned to death.


End file.
